
It’s been about six months since Peter Rojas and Downtown Records launched RCRD LBL, their digital only record label/blog hybrid. I like most other people who were curious about this venture (how could you not be, the hype was unavoidable) signed up and created a profile almost immediately, even though the features a profile offered were pretty limited. I had hoped that in time more useful features would be added, but that unfortunately hasn’t been the case.
Here are 3 features I as a fan/blogger/sharer of social media would like to see incorporated into RCRD LBL user profiles.
1. Custom playlist/mix widget - in just six months RCRD LBL has amassed quite a large catalog of music, the ability for users to take that content and create their own playlists/mixes that they could then embed elsewhere would make for a much more useful widget than some of the current offerings. It also probably wouldn’t hurt when trying to sign on new sponsors.
2. Variable height widgets - the idea behind the widgets is to get people to spread them around the web themselves, but when I just want to share one track, I don’t want to share it in a widget that is built to hold four or more tracks. It’s awkward, bulky and generally makes my site/page look funny.
3. Useful customizable rss feeds - currently the customizable rss feeds that are offered are the individual label and artist blogs, specific tags and front page news. And so far the only artists blogs that seem to get updated are those of Downtown Records artists which doesn’t offer much variety. It would be nice if each RCRD LBL post included a tag of the artist’s name in addition to the genre, that way more useful feeds could be customized by individual users.
One vast improvement RCRD LBL did just launch are the enhanced embed options for each widget, making it pretty dummy proof for users to embed them in their personal pages on most of the popular social networking sites. Though in the process of doing so they went and upped the OS requirement to Leopard on Macs for the “Dashboard” widget, a real bummer since I’m still running Tiger.
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6th Street Warehouse Shut Down
Unfortunately I think this was inevitable, especially since the cops got wind awhile ago of how badass Dave’s warehouse is (skate ramp, grilled cheeses, bad keg beer, donations instead of a cover, dirty enough and in a sketchy enough neighborhood to keep most of lame away).
6th Street Warehouse (aka Dave’s Warehouse) shut down!
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Stream and Pre-Order the new Muslims 7″

Hey, my friend Matzah (who thinks I am blowing it by not posting very much lately) is putting out a The Muslims 7″ next month on his bedroom label, I Hate Rock N’ Roll. Of the two brand spanking new songs on the 7″, Parasites b/w Walking With Jesus,
are two of the best the band has written to date“Parasites” is one of the best the band has written to date, and “Walking With Jesus” is a Spaceman 3 cover.
Stream Parasites b/w Walking With Jesus and pre-order now
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Tickets for Tee Pee Records 2nd Annual ‘Manifest Destiny’ are on sale now

An excellent lineup that shouldn’t be missed…
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Crystal Antlers sign to Touch and Go Records
Not to sound like a claimer, but ah fuck it, I’ve been singing the praises of this band since April last year and have continued to ever since…so I am very stoked for them, it couldn’t have happened to a nicer and harder working bunch. Here’s what Touch And Go has to say about signing the band:
HOT NEWS: Crystal Antlers sign to Touch and Go Records
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YouLicense.com has the right idea, now its time to build a secure site
Now that YouLicense has some money, maybe they can afford to pay someone to make it so the mp3s uploaded to their site by artists looking to license their songs aren’t easily downloadable by just viewing the source code and finding the path to mp3 files.
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Blackstrap - Steal My Horses and Run

Initially released in Europe in October 2006, Blackstrap’s second full length, Steal My Horses and Run, is finally seeing it’s official release in the U.S. via New York’s Tee Pee Records.
At first pass it would be easy to write off Steal My Horses and Run as just another retread of the JAMC and My Bloody Valentine catalogs, that is if it weren’t so well executed and/or if you weren’t able to make to the last quarter of the album where the band really opens things up with some more diversified song writing. Coming across much the same as Black Rebel Motorcycle Club did on their first album, Blackstrap wear their influences (Velvet Underground, My Bloody Valentine, Neu!, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Stereolab and Suicide) on their sleeve, writing songs that would fit on any of the aforementioned bands’ albums, only with much better production.
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Triclops! - Out Of Africa

Made up of former and current members of Bottles and Skulls, Fleshies, Lower Forty-Eight and a drummer who is in too many other bands to list, San Francisco’s Triclops! are a veritable hybrid of the Bay Area underground punk/hardcore scene.
Triclops!’s “trademark” are their vocals, which for about half of Out Of Africa are run through broken solid state amps with a phaser explosion - achieving a sound that I can only describe as how the Mars Volta’s Cedric Bixler-Zavala would sound singing underwater. While slightly off-putting on first listen, the phasered vocals effects - delievered by Fleshies’ Johnny - become pretty aurally addictive over the course of the album, so much so that when the effect is not being used, I found myself anxiously awaiting it’s return.
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Princeton - Bloomsbury EP

Yes, basing songs upon classic literary works and-or their creators at first always seems pretentious, even ColinMeloyian, but hey, if it was good enough for the likes of Iron Maiden and David Axelrod who are we to disagree. Enter Bloomsbury, the new 4-song EP from Eagle Rock, CA’s own shaggy academes turned shaggy indie rockers, Princeton. All glib - borderline sarcastic introductions aside, Bloomsbury is well put together and accessible, surprisingly so when you consider the lyrical focus on early 20th century London intellectuals and the long list of instrumentation.
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Company: K-Double Recording Co. (2007-08-07) - I Wanna Deadbeat You

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Company: Vagrant Records (2008-04-22) - Don’t You Know?

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Company: Luckyhorse Industries (2008-02-26) - L.A.

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Company: Buddyhead Records (2008-02-01) - Get It On

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Company: Cooking Vinyl USA (2007-10-23)
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Where in Long Beach is your band most likely to be found when you aren’t playing a show? Dan Cady (vocals): Alex’s Bar or the Pike—Alex was our original bass player so we just hang out there. It’s just kind of home base for us. And the Pike becau - Last Night: The Muslims, Crash …
This is cool: UCI student, Sam Farzin, has started to put on music shows at the UC Irvine’s The Phoenix Grille, one of the campus’ dining spots. Located in what one of the members of Wounded Lion described as “the anus” of UCI (you have to twist a - Last Night: The Henry Clay Peo …
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Ahh, the Showcase Theatre. I hadn't been there in almost seven years. The Showcase was the club that I started going to shows at when I was in high school, back then they had all the best punk rock acts that were coming through town, unlike today. These d
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